I didn’t know if I was supposed to answer. It seemed deeply hurtful to explain that that was all part of a performance that I’d been rehearsing for decades. My gravely growls and arched back all part of the show and he, my unknowing co-star, running lines nightly. I was embarrassed to answer, for him and for me. So, I didn’t.
And maybe I should have. Maybe I should have repeated that I didn’t know if I was capable of orgasming. That it hadn’t happened with anyone, not even myself before I got discouraged and stopped trying. That I sometimes worried that there was something medically wrong with me. That I was too ashamed to talk about it, even with my very closest friends. That I’d secretly googled “How To Orgasm,” wanting to find a numbered guide with a no-fail guarantee. That I craved intimacy. But real intimacy required honesty, a complete opening of which neither one of us were capable. I probably should have asked, “Will you help me?”
But I didn’t. I decided instead to break off another small piece of me and let it get lost in the overstuffed cushions of our broken sofa. What’s one more? I let go of his calloused fingers, pushed myself off the fractured couch, took my glass and gently set it in the sink and walked up the stairs to bed.
“Good night,” I said as I passed the living room. “I love you.”
And we never talked about it again.
Two years, one inevitable divorce, and a handful of fruitless partners later, I experienced my first orgasm. I was 40 years old. It came at the hands (or um, battery) of a small pink vibrator called the Pebble that, as promised, delivered clit-sucking technology and required not a single shred of showmanship.
I was born nimble, bending to accommodate others’ comfort. If we bend beyond the point of reasonable compromise, over time we unknowingly create an alternative reality. One based predominantly on the comfort and desires of another. One that is no longer our own. By nature, living someone else’s truth is living your own lie. And lies create distrust and distance within a relationship, even within the one we have with ourselves.
The couch in my living room is still broken, the frame held up by an old 2×4, but I am fixing myself; resisting the urge to bend beyond breakage. I hope to tell you that I find an orgasm in the future, one from a real live human. But, at the very least, I promise that I will move through life in a more honest way, cultivating a truth that is genuinely mine — even if it is 20 years too late.
The author is writing under a pseudonym.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost in March 2025.
